Part 45 (1/2)

'Impossible. We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o'clock. Smithson and some other men are to meet us there. I have promised to drive Mrs.

Mostyn down. You had better begin to dress.'

'But I ought to write to-day. I had better ask for this money at once, and have done with it. Two thousand pounds! I feel as if I were a thief.

You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?'

'Not rich as the world goes nowadays. n.o.body is rich now, except your commercial magnates, like Smithson. Great peers, unless their money is in London ground-rents, are great paupers. To own land is to be dest.i.tute. I don't suppose two thousand pounds will break your grandmother's bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while we were at Cannes. If you were engaged--about to make a really good match--you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is, although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of view you are a failure.'

A failure. It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true. She, the reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth talking about, except Mr. Smithson.

'Don't tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or two,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly. 'The creatures can wait for their money. Give yourself time to think.'

'I will,' answered Lesbia, dolefully.

'And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh. My love, your eyes are dreadfully heavy. You _must_ use a little belladonna. I'll send Rilboche to you.'

And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.

She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.

Lesbia put the bills in her desk, and gave herself time to think, as Lady Kirkbank advised her. But the thinking progress resulted in very little good. All the thought of which she was capable would not reduce the totals of those two dreadful accounts. And every day brought some fresh bill. The stationer, the bootmaker, the glover, the perfumer, people who had courted Lady Lesbia's custom with an air which implied that the honour of serving fas.h.i.+onable beauty was the first consideration, and the question of payment quite a minor point--these now began to ask for their money in the most prosaic way. Every straw added to Lesbia's burden; and her heart grew heavier with every post.

'One can see the season is waning when these people begin to pester with their accounts,' said Lady Kirkbank, who always talked of tradesmen as if they were her natural enemies.

Lesbia accepted this explanation of the avalanche of bills, and never suspected Lady Kirkbank's influence in the matter. It happened, however, that the chaperon, having her own reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to bring Mr.

Smithson's suit to a successful issue, had told Seraphine and the other people to send in their bills immediately. Lady Lesbia would be leaving London in a week or so, she informed these purveyors, and would like to settle everything before she went away.

Mr. Smithson appeared in Arlington Street almost every day, and was full of schemes for new pleasures--or pleasures as nearly new as the world of fas.h.i.+on can afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berks.h.i.+re place during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they were apt to talk somewhat slightingly of his antecedents.

Lady Kirkbank felt that this invitation was a turning point, and that if Lesbia went to stay at Rood Hall, her acceptance of Mr. Smithson was a certainty. She would see him at his place in Berks.h.i.+re in the most flattering aspect; his surroundings as lord of the manor, and owner of one of the finest old places in the county, would lend dignity to his insignificance. Lesbia at first expressed a strong disinclination to go to Rood Hall. There would be a most unpleasant feeling in stopping at the house of a man whom she had refused, she told Lady Kirkbank.

'My dear, Mr. Smithson has forgiven you,' answered her chaperon. 'He is the soul of good nature.'

'One would think he was accustomed to be refused,' said Lesbia. 'I don't want to go to Rood Hall, but I don't want to spoil your Henley week.

Could not I run down to Grasmere for a week, with Kibble to take care of me, and see dear grandmother? I could tell her about those dreadful bills.'

'Bury yourself at Grasmere in the height of the season! Not to be thought of! Besides, Lady Maulevrier objected before to the idea of your travelling alone with Kibble. No! if you can't make up your mind to go to Rood Hall, George and I must make up our minds to stay away. But it will be rather hard lines; for that Henley week is quite the jolliest thing in the summer.'

'Then I'll go,' said Lesbia, with a resigned air. 'Not for worlds would I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.'

In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall. She was curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson's possessions. She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace--the homes of the Medici--the halls of dead and gone Doges--and now she was told that Rood Hall--a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation--was even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane. At Rood Hall there were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens, lawns, the river, and a deer park.

So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid himself at Lesbia's feet, as it were, with regard to all other invitations for the Henley festival. Whom should he ask to meet her?--whom would she have?

'You are very good,' she said, 'but I have really no wish to be consulted. I am not a royal personage, remember. I could not presume to dictate.'

'But I wish you to dictate. I wish you to be imperious in the expression of your wishes.'

'Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be consulted,' said Lesbia, modestly.

'Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody.